Decorating a child's bedroom or a nursery is a wonderful opportunity to create a safe haven that inspires fun, friendship and fantasy. Turn your child's bedroom into a world of sweet dreams!

When it comes to decorating a child's room, we all want to create something fun and colourful, but without the costs spiralling out of control.  If you're not an expert yourself but hiring an interior decorator or designer just isn't in the budget, there are plenty of unique and inexpensive ways to create a fantasy room for your child, and the first step is to pick a theme.

Choosing a Theme:

You may think that this is the easy part - but it is worth taking some time to think about this. Selecting a character theme is fine, but bear in mind that kids change their "favourites" frequently and what your child loves today may be old news tomorrow!  You really need to find a theme that will grow with your child, for example, a room decorated in our Jungle theme can work all the way from a nursery into a room for a 12-year old child. 

Decorating a child's room can certainly be daunting: there's just so much choice - bedding sets, furnishings, wall art and accessories of all kinds! But the good news is that once you've chosen your theme, you're halfway there!

Walls:

Once you've chosen the theme, it's time to start decorating. The four walls of the bedroom are blank canvasses for your creativity. Some simple but impressive techniques can turn plain walls into works of art.

It's so tempting to think of pale pink for girls and blue for boys. But there are other ways to get inspiration for decorating kids' rooms. A painted wall in a solid primary colour can go a long way in changing a boring plain room into a cheery environment. But remember that small hands leave many prints and marks, these will be much easier to clean off if you use a semi-gloss paint rather than matt.

Make a painted wall more fun with our removable self-adhesive wall art. They really are a wonderful way to create stunning, fun and inspiring rooms for children. Simply decide where you want the stickers - then simply peel and stick. Should you wish to reposition a sticker during application carefully peel off and stick down again. It couldn't be easier. 

Or make a room even more funky but adding a mural to the wall. You don't have to be Michaelangelo to do this, our Wall-Tastic wallpaper murals are put up in 12 simple steps - the effect is fantastic but it is amazingly easy to do!  We currently have 3 highly detailed, unique 3D computer generated murals to choose from, with another 6 designs becoming available in the very near future.

Be brave with paint! Try creating some special effects on your walls. It's easy to paint a base colour, dampen a natural sponge, dip into a second colour and dab lightly on the walls. The best part being that if you don't like the effect you've created, simply paint over the top!

Furniture:

Finding furniture for your newly decorated room can be bit of a challenge, but make the right choice and your investment will last you and your child for years to come. One of the key factors to a versatile room is in choosing furnishings that are long lasting. After all, baby days move quickly into toddlerhood, then to pre-school and beyond, and in that time everything changes.

As such, to make your child's room versatile you need furnishings that can grow, change and adapt to new stages in your child's development. You could redecorate every two or three years... or your could plan ahead and choose furniture that has a life beyond the nursery - which makes decorating sense, economic sense and common sense. For example, our changing tables double up as a great toy cupboard after the nappy stage so you get extra value for money as your child grows.

At Little Rotpots, we try very hard to give you products that are a little different. We want your little ones to enjoy their bedrooms and so our furniture is fun, imaginative and fantastic to look at. It is built to last from good quality materials and, most importantly, will not break your bank account.

Our furnishings will give you the confidence that a beautifully decorated room will not only look great over the years, but adapt to your child's changing needs.

Windows:

Now here is an area where you can really save money by doing it yourself!  But don't forget that beyond the usual decisions of colour, style and pattern, there are also basic safety issues. Many experts recommend avoiding long curtains/draperies in a child's room, especially during the years when they are crawling and learning to walk as it's all too easy for small children to grab onto the long flow fabric with a danger of pulling the whole lot down on themselves.

Try to keep things simple, window treatments for a child's room should be as light and airy as possible. Don't forget to avoid long curtains/draperies for very young babies and children, go for shades, blinds or shorter curtains instead.

There are a few effects you can inexpensively create yourself:

• To make a pretty valance/pelmet for over your curtains/blind, simply take a valance rod and place self-adhesive velcro all along the length of it. Take the opposite side of the velcro and stick varying lengths of ribbon (between ¼" and ½" wide) along it, making sure it touches side to side. You can use ribbon which matches the colour of your curtains or blind, but it's also nice to use contrasting colours. The ribbons will then flutter in the breeze when the window is open and will entertain your child as well as look very attractive.

• Create a leafy valance (this idea looks especially good in a room featuring our Wall-Tastic jungle mural). Depending on the size of your window (the following amounts should be right for a window about 5 foot wide), you will need about 15 sheets of light and dark green craft foam (9"x12" sheets) and about 8½ foot/5.5 metres of paper twist (should be readily available in any art/craft shops), pen, scissors and hot glue. Make two paper templates of leaves - one large leaf shape approximately 12"x8" and one smaller leaf measuring approximately 5"x3". Trace the leaf design on to both the light and dark green craft foam. Cut out the leaves - try about 10 large leaves and 10 small leaves. Before actually gluing the leaves, arrange them on the floor to find the perfect pattern, then hot-glue the leaves to the valance rod (note: when you glue, it's easiest if you place the valance rod across the seat of a chair or two). Glue the large leaves on first and then accent with smaller leaves.  Drape the paper twist around and over the rod to look like a vine - very easy and very effective!

• An inexpensive way to make curtains is to use twin sheets for the fabric, since sheets often go on sale - this method is also helpful if you can't find any curtains to match your bedding! You do need an iron and sewing machine, but don't need to be an expert sewer - you just need to be able to sew in a straight line. Simply cut the sheet in half horizontally and hem the edges of each piece. Fold over the tops (side you just hemmed) by about 4" and then iron to form a crease. Sew a seam 1" from top all the way across. Then sew a second seam ⅝" from the bottom of the folded section. Repeat process for second piece of fabric. Slip a curtain rod through the pockets you've created and bunch the fabric together so that both pieces fit on one rod. Tie the fabric in the middle with a bow made from ribbon - use ribbon at least 1" wide.